Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

Spouse

Lusungu Kayani

Jason K. Stearns is an American writer who worked for ten years in the Congo, including three years during the Second Congo War. He first traveled to the Congo in 2001 to work for a local human rights organization, Héritiers de la Justice, in Bukavu. He went on to work for the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUC). In 2008 Stearns was named by the UN Secretary General to lead a special UN investigation into the violence in the country.

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Jason Stearns was born in San Francisco in 1976 to Stephen C. Stearns, an evolutionary biologist, and Beverly Peterson Stearns, a journalist. He has an older brother, Justin, who is professor of Middle Eastern history at New York University.

At the age of six, the family moved to Switzerland, where Stephen Stearns taught biology at the University of Basel. Stearns attended Swiss public school in Arlesheim and Muenchenstein, on the outskirts of Basel, and spent a year in Laja, Chile, on an exchange program. Upon graduation from Gymnasium Muenchenstein, he volunteered at the Swiss Tropical Institute's field research station in Ifakara, Tanzania.

Between 2005 and 2007, Stearns was based in Nairobi, Kenya, as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, working on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. In 2007, he left to spend a year and a half researching and writing Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, a history of the Congo wars of 1996-2003, based on interviews with leading protagonists of the conflict. The title stems from a speech given by Congolese President Laurent Kabila in which he castigates Congolese for blaming their woes on a few political leaders, suggesting that the political malaise in the country is a more systemic problem. The book, which was eventually published in 2011, received critical acclaim in major newspapers and magazines.

In 2008, Stearns was named as coordinator of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Congo, a panel responsible for researching support and financing of armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In their final report, the Group found both the Rwandan and Congolese governments guilty of violating United Nations sanctions. According to eyewitness testimony, phone records and other documentary evidence, the Rwandan government had provided military support to the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) rebel group, while the Congolese government had collaborated with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels, as well as other Congolese armed groups.[1]

Following the report, the Swedish and Dutch government temporarily suspended aid to the Rwandan government. Several months after the publication of the report, the Rwandan government arrested the leader of the CNDP, Laurent Nkunda, and struck a peace deal with the Congolese government.

In 2010, Stearns married Lusungu Kayani, a Tanzanian-American employee of the United Nations and a fashion and textile entrepreneur.